Misery

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MISERY - PAGE 5

Louis T. Thompson, 20, of 6435 Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn, was charged Tuesday with unlawful use of a weapon after he allegedly shot a raccoon with a .25-caliber handgun at his stepfather's home in the 4400 block of Fender Road. Thompson told police the raccoon had gotten into a dog pen and had been mauled by the dogs and he was only trying to put the raccoon out of its misery.

All the chickens released so indiscriminately by a well-meaning but gullible administration are now coming home to roost. The misplaced altruism of Jimmy Carter, aided and abetted by a host of bleeding hearts, allowed Fidel Castro to dump all the scum from his jail cells and mental institutions on Jimmy and the United States. And so today we are paying the price. Compounding the misery is the absolute stupidity of the present administration in not forewarning the prison heads where these felons were held about the upcoming deal with Cuba to ship most of them back.

As both a devout Cub fan and devoted baseball fan, I have to look at the positive side when it comes to a possible Major League Baseball work stoppage in the very near future. And there is a very definite upside should the current baseball season come to an abrupt and premature end. The relative misery that's been the 2002 season would be at an end. And what's even better, I'd get my money back for all those lousy games that are canceled. How's that for a win-win situation?

Detractors of Jack Kevorkian invoke religious rhetoric and God's name, claiming that only God should decide when to end an individual's natural life on Earth. Until I get a sufficient explanation as to the mystery of why our Creator allows millions of people to languish in misery and die slow, painful deaths, I believe it is our fundamental right to end it on our terms and die with dignity. Arresting Kevorkian for murder is an outrage. In my book he is a saint.

The themes are the same ones that have obsessed Depeche Mode for 25 years--sin, guilt, death, repression, betrayal--but the presentation is surprisingly fresh. On the dysfunctional trio's 11th studio album, the tension is palpable, and the music is all the better for it. Singer Dave Gahan still croons like a recovering addict all too ready to wallow in his misery, but spasms of noise, static and fire-alarm bells jolt the lush melodies, and keep everything honed to a razor-sharp edge.

You already know the news: Last week Forbes Magazine released its 2013 list of "America's Most Miserable Cities," and Chicago made the cut. We ranked fourth-most-miserable of 200 U.S. cities. Detroit robbed us of a first-place finish, followed by Flint, Mich., and our neighbor Rockford. Team Forbes evaluated statistics on violent crime, unemployment, foreclosures, taxes, home prices, commute times and weather. This year the magazine didn't use political corruption as a metric, as it has in the past.

In Afghanistan, beset by misery after misery, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Because, well, there is no power for the light. In yet another bit of depressing news, at least for the people who live here, the Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water announced this week that water in the country's dams has decreased by up to 65 percent, compared with last year. If the drought continues like this, residents of the capital, Kabul, will soon have less than four hours of power a day. Even that amount of electricity comes with strings.

I appreciate the Tribune's position on printing a rape victim's name (Douglas Kneeland's "Re-examining our policy on rape"). It is one thing to examine rape as a societal problem, but quite another to deal with it as an individual. I`m told that one of the strongest feelings of a rape victim is the loss of control over their own personhood. Printing a victim's name without their permission would perpetuate that feeling and only add to their misery. How on earth can it be the "public's right to know" the name of the victim of such a personal crime?

I keep reading and hearing criticism about the time, money and effort that was supposedly wasted in freeing a couple of whales. And I suppose from a practical standpoint, the criticism is justified, for we received no material benefits in return from the whales. But fortunately for mankind, there is much more to this. For there is in our society, and in most all others, a group of people who can be called The Compassionate Ones, a group that can feel deeply for the misery and suffering of others, man or beast, and desires to alleviate such conditions wherever it may find them.

Rivers are not supposed to spill their banks in summer. It's never supposed to rain this much, as much as it has in record amounts throughout the Midwest these past months. There is water, water everywhere, and it measures nothing so much as our eternal vulnerability to the enormous and unpredictable forces of nature and the need of human will to cope with it. We are accustomed in this region to periodic onslaughts, the inconveniences of power and traffic disrupted, the misery of homes flooded.